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Family Support New Hampshire

Family Support NH is a non-profit organization whose work is whole-heartedly supported by New Hampshire Children's Trust. Family Support NH is not a program of New Hampshire Children's Trust, they are a separate organization. Because FSNH provides a vital link between organizations doing work to support families and promote protective factors, New Hampshire Children's Trust is pleased to host a page devoted to this important organization.

Family Support NH is a coalition of non-profit family resource centers (FRC) and family support programs (FSP) that are designed to meet the needs of the communities they serve. Programs and services provided by FRC and FSP vary, but they all seek to strengthen families by promoting health, wellbeing, self-sufficiency, and positive parenting through support and education.

Mission
Family Support New Hampshire acts to bring together the diverse leadership from existing and newly forming family resource centers and family support programs within New Hampshire under the common vision of establishing a statewide network of family support practice within New Hampshire.

Focus Areas

Visibility - Increase the public knowledge about and access to family resource centers and family support programs.

Advocacy - Educate and empower professionals, funding sources, and public officials so that centers and programs have the resources they need to support families. Educate and empower families so that parents have the resources they need to raise their children.

Technical Assistance - Provide support through monthly membership meetings and informative emails. Provide training and assistance to new and existing centers and programs.

Professionalism - Maintain relationships with national policy makers; adhere to Best Practices including the Family Support America Principles of Family Support.

Principles of Family Support

Staff and families work together in relationships based on equality and respect.

Staff enhance families' capacity to support the growth and development of all family members - adults, youth and children.

Families are resources to their own members, to other families, to programs, and to communities.

Programs affirm and strengthen families' cultural, racial, and linguistic identities and enhance their ability to function in a multicultural society.

Programs are embedded in their communities and contribute to the community-building process.

Programs advocate with families for services and systems that are fair, responsive, and accountable to the families served.

Practitioners work with families to mobilize formal and informal resources to support family development.

Programs are flexible and continually responsive to emerging family and community issues.

Principles of family support are modeled in all program activities, including planning, governance, and administration.

From Family Support America (1996) Guidelines for Family Support Practice. Chicago.

For more information about the work of NH's family resource centers and their impact read this statement:

In 2016, Family Support NH asked Full-Circle Consulting to conduct research and facilitate a cross-system process to make recommendations about what a system of Family Resource Centers of Quality might look like. The results of that research and process are contained in a report available here.